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Red flags explained
What a red flag on the page of an exchange or a coin means, which data it is measured from, and what it does not say.
By market cap
Cointelegraph
The BlockWhat a red flag is
A red flag is a measurement that does not fit what an exchange or a coin reports about itself, stated with its own figures. It is produced by published rules, the same for everybody, and nobody adds, removes or edits one by hand. It is not a statement that anybody committed fraud, and it changes no price and no score on this site.
Flags are separate from Fraud Signals, which hold documented cases entered by an editor with a link to evidence.
Where the data comes from
Only from what each exchange publishes itself through its public market-data interface, read directly and continuously: prices and 24-hour volumes of every market about once a minute, order books of markets trading at least $100 a day, and the feed of recent public trades about every half hour. No figure comes from another data provider, from a rating, from the press or from user reports.
The measurements themselves are on each exchange's page (order-book backing, estimated real volume, price agreement, data availability) and on each market's row, so every flag can be traced to the numbers under it. The exact formulas and limits are in the methodology.
When a flag appears and disappears
Conditions are evaluated once an hour. A flag is raised only after its condition has held six hours in a row, so a single bad hour, at the exchange or in the reading, raises nothing. It is lowered after six hours in a row without the condition. Exchanges are judged from $1M of measured volume and coins from $1M of daily volume: below that a single trade decides the figures.
Flags on exchanges
Volume without order-book depth
What was measured
On markets carrying a quarter or more of the exchange's judged volume, the orders resting within ±2% of the price are worth less than 1% of the volume reported for 24 hours.
Why it is shown
A market that really trades a billion dollars a day normally shows far more than a few million of orders near the price. On regulated exchanges 95% of markets trade less than 18 times their depth.
What else can explain it
Fast market makers can turn over a small book many times; some exchanges publish only part of the book (those are not judged); a one-day burst of trading raises volume before depth follows. Pairs of two dollar-pegged assets are exempt.
Trades inside the spread
What was measured
On markets carrying a quarter or more of judged volume, more than 80% of recent public trades printed strictly between the best bid and the best ask.
Why it is shown
A trade against a visible order happens at the bid or at the ask. Trades that keep printing in between were not matched against the book other participants can see.
What else can explain it
Hidden or midpoint orders, block trades reported to the public feed, and the delay between reading the book and reading the trades can all put honest trades inside the spread.
Public trades below reported volume
What was measured
On markets carrying a quarter or more of judged volume, a full day of readings of the public trade feed adds up to less than a fifth of the 24-hour volume the exchange reports.
Why it is shown
The trade feed and the volume figure describe the same trading. When they differ fivefold, one of them does not describe what happened.
What else can explain it
The reported figure may include trades the public feed leaves out (block or broker trades, other products under the same ticker), or the feed may be cut short by the exchange.
No recent trades
What was measured
On markets reporting at least $1M a day and carrying a quarter or more of judged volume, the newest public trade is more than 30 minutes old.
Why it is shown
A million dollars a day is a trade every few seconds on average. Half an hour of silence does not fit that.
What else can explain it
A public trade feed that lags or is paused during maintenance looks the same from outside.
Prices off the market
What was measured
Over the exchange's markets of coins that other exchanges also trade, with at least $100 traded in 24 hours, the median distance from the Coinsprey price is above 1%. This flag is paused while the pairing of tickers that different coins share is being repaired.
Why it is shown
Where money can move freely, the same coin costs nearly the same everywhere. A persistent gap means prices there are not connected to the rest of the market.
What else can explain it
Local-currency exchanges can carry a real premium, deposits or withdrawals may be restricted, and a wrong currency rate on Coinsprey's side produces the same picture (one such error was found and fixed in October 2026).
Data often unavailable
What was measured
Fewer than 95% of at least 1,000 requests for the exchange's public market data succeeded in 24 hours.
Why it is shown
Prices that cannot be read cannot be checked or used.
What else can explain it
Maintenance, rate limits applied to the reader, or blocking of its location cause this without anything being wrong at the exchange.
Flags on coins
Priced on one exchange
What was measured
A single exchange forms the coin's price, on at least $1M of daily volume.
Why it is shown
With one venue there is nothing to compare the price with, and that venue's outage or error is the coin's price.
What else can explain it
New coins usually start on one exchange. The flag describes concentration, not the coin's quality.
Priced only by exchanges not included in prices
What was measured
Every exchange trading the coin fails a check that would let its markets count (prices agree, data arrive, order books readable).
Why it is shown
The price shown rests only on figures that could not be verified against anything.
What else can explain it
An exchange may fail a check for a technical reason, for example because it publishes no order book.
Low price confidence
What was measured
The price confidence score is below 40 of 100.
Why it is shown
Few venues, thin books, wide spreads or disagreeing prices: the number shown is a weak estimate.
What else can explain it
The components of the score are on the coin's page and say which of these it is.
Reported volume mostly contradicted
What was measured
Over judged markets carrying at least half of the coin's volume, the estimate of real volume is below a quarter of what is reported.
Why it is shown
Most of the trading reported for the coin sits on markets where a measurement contradicts it.
What else can explain it
The same alternative explanations apply as for the exchange flags above; the estimate is deliberately cut only on hard contradictions.
What a flag does not say
It does not say why the measurement looks the way it does, and several ordinary explanations are listed above for each. It says nothing about custody, solvency, licences or the people behind an exchange: none of that is measured here. An exchange or a coin without a flag is not thereby safe; a large market with a deep book and trades at the best prices contradicts nothing, inflated or not.
If a flag is wrong
Measurements can be wrong: an interface changes, a book is published in part, a rate is off. An exchange or a project that believes a flag rests on such an error can describe it through the report form, with the market concerned. Where the measurement is at fault the rule or the reader is corrected for everybody and the change is noted in the methodology; flags are not removed on request or for payment.